Cohort 8 (2026)
Discovery Module

ADVANCING EQUITABLE AUTO CARE AND DECENT WORK

Aster aims to build a full-service auto repair shop centered on respectful, affordable service for BIPOC, women, queer people, and other customers. Through discounted labor, capped parts markups, community car-care education, and a technician compensation model built around stable wages and quality work, Aster aims to make vehicle care more accessible while creating a safer, more inclusive workplace in an industry where many people have felt excluded or mistreated.

Breathe Creative LLC

ADVANCING HEALTH COMMUNICATION AND EQUITABLE ACCESS

Breathe Creative LLC applies cognitive-neuroscience-informed audience analysis and strategy to mission-driven organizations. Through audience research, narrative strategy, fundraising strategy, and a planned neuromarketing practice, Breathe Creative LLC is helping health, wellness, nonprofit, and arts organizations understand how people process information and make decisions. Its broader aim is to strengthen behavior-change communication while making deeper audience insight more accessible to organizations that may not otherwise have the resources to use it.

Elda

ADVANCING INDEPENDENCE IN AGING AND CARE EQUITY

Elda helps older adults and family caregivers manage the administrative demands of aging. Through trusted personal assistants, in-person and remote support, technology help, errands, scheduling, paperwork, and problem-solving, Elda helps older adults maintain independence and agency while easing the unpaid care burden that often falls on women. By making everyday systems easier to navigate, Elda gives families more capacity for connection, choice, and the parts of life that matter most.

Renew

ADVANCING ECONOMIC MOBILITY AND INCLUSIVE PATHWAYS TO WORK

Carmen is creating employment, workforce development, and entrepreneurship pathways for people impacted by the criminal legal system. Through commercial cleaning services, skill-building, mentorship, and a long-term vision for business ownership, Renew is building a revenue-generating social enterprise designed to expand economic mobility and create more inclusive pathways to work and wealth-building.

ADVANCING INCLUSIVE STORYTELLING AND WOMEN’S VOICES

Chao Yang is creating a pathway to publishing for first-generation immigrant, refugee, and BIPOC women. Through coaching, editing, distribution support, workshops, community, and local partnerships, the incubator is designed to help emerging authors navigate an industry whose networks and cultural capital can be difficult to access. By building infrastructure around stories too often excluded or told by others, the venture aims to expand whose voices shape culture and public understanding.

Tended Roots Collaborative LLC

ADVANCING COLLECTIVE ACTION AND MORE EQUITABLE COMMUNITIES

Tended Roots Collaborative is building shared data infrastructure for place-based coalitions. Through integrated data systems, shared measurement, facilitation, and partner capacity-building, Tended Roots helps public, nonprofit, healthcare, education, and community partners align evidence and act together on complex local challenges. Its model is designed to strengthen collective decision-making so communities can better address unequal outcomes across health, education, housing, childcare, food security, and economic mobility.

Halftime Development

ADVANCING EQUITABLE ACCESS TO SPORTS AND COMMUNITY WELL-BEING

Halftime Development is developing year-round sports facilities in communities that lack sufficient field access. Through rentable all-season fields designed to serve local recreational and club programs, the venture aims to reduce barriers to participation, strengthen community-based youth sports, and create more opportunities for physical activity close to home. Its social-enterprise purpose is not simply to build facilities, but to make high-quality sports infrastructure more accessible across income, racial, and geographic differences.

Grandpa Jack’s

ADVANCING SOCIAL INCLUSION AND WHOLE-PERSON WELL-BEING

Grandpa Jack’s is creating community-centered spaces within long-term care and independent living settings where older adults can connect, share stories, and preserve personal legacies. Through a coffee shop, thrift shop, and podcast studio, Grandpa Jack’s is designed to make everyday participation and storytelling more accessible inside the places residents call home. The model centers older adults as people with histories, relationships, and voices worth celebrating, strengthening social inclusion and whole-person well-being.

Sound Scape Studio

ADVANCING CREATIVE CAREERS AND INCLUSIVE OPPORTUNITY

Sound Scape Studio pairs professional music production with artist development for Hmong-American and independent musicians. Through recording, mixing, mastering, mentorship, workshops, and industry guidance, Sound Scape Studio is helping artists build the skills, networks, and professional support needed to pursue sustainable creative careers while expanding access and representation in the music industry. Its work also creates a pathway for Hmong language and culture to continue through music.

Kitchen Unleashed

ADVANCING ENTREPRENEURIAL OPPORTUNITY AND ECONOMIC INCLUSION

Kitchen Unleashed helps Black, Brown, immigrant, and low-wealth food entrepreneurs turn culinary skill into sustainable business opportunity. Through entrepreneurship training, food safety education, mentorship, market connections, and plans for shared commercial kitchen access, Kitchen Unleashed is creating an on-ramp from informal food selling to business formalization and growth. Its community-informed model is designed to expand access to entrepreneurial resources, strengthen economic mobility, and help families build lasting prosperity while celebrating food rooted in culture and tradition.

Golden Mandarin

ADVANCING BELONGING AND SHARED ABUNDANCE

Golden Mandarin hosts welcoming, home-like gatherings that connect community participation with local giving. Through shared meals, pay-what-you-can events, local art, film, and rotating fundraising causes, Golden Mandarin is creating accessible third spaces where people can build relationships, experience generosity together, and direct resources toward community-identified needs. Its planned filmmaker-development work could deepen this model by expanding connection and opportunity for filmmakers of color and emerging filmmakers.

Climate Confident LLC

ADVANCING CLIMATE ACTION AND EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING

Climate Confident connects people with trusted climate guides for live, one-to-one conversations. Through personalized guidance, climate skill building, community connection, and access to experts, the platform is designed to help people make sense of climate challenges, find emotional grounding, build confidence discussing climate issues, and identify practical ways to act. By pairing human connection with credible expertise, Climate Confident aims to turn climate concern into informed participation and sustained agency.

Rooted in Care Network

ADVANCING EQUITABLE ACCESS AND WHOLE-PERSON WELL-BEING

Rooted in Care Network helps older adults, people with disabilities, caregivers, and people facing housing instability navigate disconnected systems and access needed support. Through care coordination, resource and benefit navigation, advocacy, wellness check-ins, appointment support, and connections to community services, Rooted in Care Network is working to reduce access barriers, strengthen stability and independence, and help people stay healthy, housed, connected, and supported.

The Writing as Healing Project

ADVANCING WELL-BEING THROUGH INCLUSIVE STORYTELLING

The Writing as Healing Project creates trauma-informed writing spaces for people navigating difficult experiences and for the professionals who support them. Through guided writing, literary craft, community cohorts, institutional training, and a model that uses earned revenue to subsidize free and sliding-scale access, The Writing as Healing Project is working to promote well-being, expand access to culturally responsive creative practice, and help underrepresented experiences become stories that can be witnessed and preserved.

Wonder Wander

ADVANCING CULTURAL LEARNING AND CONNECTED COMMUNITIES

Wonder Wander turns public art into an accessible, place-based learning experience. Through its mobile app, SEE SAY DO prompts, Weekly Wonder newsletter, and partnerships with cultural institutions and cities, Wonder Wander helps people slow down, look closely, reflect, create, and connect with the art already around them. By bringing an art educator’s guidance into everyday public spaces, the company makes cultural learning more approachable while deepening people’s connection to the places and communities they move through.

Growth Over Comfort LLC

ADVANCING BELONGING AND SECOND-CHANCE REINTEGRATION

Growth Over Comfort LLC helps mosques and Muslim organizations become stronger partners for people returning home from incarceration. Through readiness assessments, imam and volunteer training, program design, mentorship networks, family engagement, and community connection, the enterprise is working to reduce stigma and isolation while expanding pathways to belonging, accountability, and successful reintegration. Its model treats faith communities not as an afterthought, but as trusted infrastructure for second chances.